A Fond Forbes Farewell
"Mr. Kemp, at a time when
the Republican Party seems to be determined to be united,
doesn't your endorsement of Mr. Forbes seem rather
divisive?"
- Peter Jennings to Jack Kemp, March 6 World
News Tonight.
"Forbes's persistence
matches that of the movement he champions. For despite being
largely discredited and banished by the political and economic
establishment, supply-sideism has refused to disappear."
-
Washington Post reporter Glenn Frankel in a front page story,
March 12.
The McVeigh Update: Conservatives Still Incite Violence
"The torching of black
churches throughout the South punctuates the ugly rhetoric of
the Buchanan campaign....In fact, all the conservative
Republicans, from Newt Gingrich to Pete Wilson, who have sought
political advantage by exploiting white resentment should come
and stand in the charred ruins of the New Liberty Baptist Church
in Tyler [Alabama]...and wonder if their coded phrases
encouraged the arsonists. Over the past 18 months, while
Republicans fulminated about welfare and affirmative action,
more than 20 churches in Alabama and six other Southern and
Border states have been torched....there is already enough
evidence to indict the cynical conservatives who build their
political careers, George Wallace-style, on a foundation of
race-baiting. They may not start fires, but they fan the
flames."
- Time national correspondent Jack E. White,
March 18 issue.
"The Republicans captured
Congress by insisting that the government itself was the
problem....But the Republicans played Robin Hood in reverse:
taking from Medicare to finance reductions in capital gains. But
no one keeps up with Buchanan, who, drunk on his early success,
turns to medieval war cries. `The peasants are coming with
pitchforks!' he bellows at every stop. It's comic, captivating,
viscerally appealing - and scary. Those black-leather bikers
and gun nuts turning up at his rallies may not have mastered the
concept of metaphor. Urging them to `lock and load' - and take
aim at `Jose' - is virtually a request for violence."
-
Reporter Jason DeParle in a March 17 New York Times Magazine
story subheaded: "The presidential contenders are falling
all over themselves to identify with the lunch pail vote. But
it's all talk: The remedy is more government, and no one will
say that."
Pat Buchanan: Son of Willie Horton?
"I think in some ways this
is the natural payback from a Republican Party that has flirted
too much with code words and Willie Horton-type ads, and when
you incite that kind of feeling, don't be surprised when it
comes up and hits you in the face."
- NPR reporter Nina
Totenberg, February 24 Inside Washington.
"Like a stain suddenly
ruining the new carpet, the success of Pat Buchanan and his
alarming snarl - xenophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic,
homophobic and racist - has sent the smug Republican family
into a dither of accountability. `Who let that pit bull into the
house and why wasn't he housebroken?' they must be asking, as if
Buchanan is someone else's dog....This is not some mongrel
outsider but rather a purebred from the kennels of Barry
Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan....Buchanan speaks
for a good chunk of the party faithful who have been lured into
the fold with a message of fear and hate and now demand to be
heard. These are the folks who take seriously the charge that
immigrants and uppity minorities are the source of all our
problems."
- Former L.A. Times reporter Robert Scheer, Feb.
27 column.
"In the end, Pat Buchanan
is a hater not a healer, a guerrilla not a statesman. For all
his flaws, Republicans would be better off with Bob Dole, a man
who thinks of his opponents as `distinguished gentlemen,' not
instruments of the devil."
- United Features Syndicate
column by ABC's Cokie Roberts and her husband Steven of U.S.
News & World Report, February 28.
CBS News: Have You Seen Your Bizarre Anchor Today?
Dan Rather: "I don't do
editorials. And about that perhaps you and I will just - I hope
in good humor - agree to disagree that we don't do
editorializing. And I'm either famous or infamous, depending on
your point of view, saying we don't editorialize; we don't want
to editorialize, in no way, shape, or form...."
King: "Over all these
fifteen years, how do you react to the constant, especially, far
right-wing criticism that the news on CBS is mainstream
biased?"
Rather: "Well, I don't
quite know what mainstream is."
King: "I don't know what it
means either, but they say it. I'm just quoting 'em."
Rather: "Oh, no. I
understand. Well, my answer to that is basically a good Texas
phrase, which is bullfeathers....I think the fact that if
someone survives for four or five years at or near the top in
network television, you can just about bet they are pretty good
at keeping independence in their reporting. What happens is a
lot of people don't want independence. They want the news
reported the way they want it for their own special political
agendas or ideological reasons."
- CNN's Larry King Live,
March 11.
Reality Check:
"The new Republican
majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative
agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of
them designed to help children and the poor."
- The
independent, non-editorializing Dan Rather on the March 16, 1995
Evening News.
Quite the Observant Reporter
"When you're talking about
pure journalists, I mean reporters, when you're talking about
reporters, not columnists, I don't think there's any liberal
bias. I don't think there really ever has been."
- Los
Angeles Times Senior Washington correspondent Jack Nelson on
CNBC's Politics '96, March 9.
Limbaugh's Lies
"Kurtz dutifully recounts
the extremist ravings of radio hosts, from the provincial Howie
Carr to that nationally syndicated phenomenon Rush Limbaugh.
These are nothing new, but Kurtz draws a few fresh
conclusions....he looks beyond the controversy over Limbaugh's
half-truths and lies (which sway listeners by the
millions)..."
- Boston Globe TV critic Frederic Biddle
reviewing Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz's book, Hot Air:
All Talk, All the Time, February 26.
Nuts Over Nuts
"Emcee Charlayne Hunter-Gault
[of the PBS NewsHour]...broke the spell of sisterhood when she
pointedly called on [Sally] Quinn to explain why women
participate in the trashing of Hillary....Others went on about
getting your legs waxed while reading to your son (editor Tina
Brown), James Carville dropping his soiled underwear in the
dining room (his wife, TV talk host Mary Matalin) and the
general conflicts besetting mother-magnates....When Hunter-Gault
applauded the lack of wonkiness, citing a discussion of male
testicles at one table, Andrea Mitchell's beeper went off, as if
on cue."
- Time's Margaret Carlson in her "Washington
Diary" on a lunch celebrating The New Yorker's women's
issue, March 4.
Anchoring the News in High Heels
"How are women on the road
different from men? `They are more meticulous, more organized.
More multidimensional,' she [CBS News campaign producer Susan
Zirinsky] says. `And less cynical.' Dan Rather, she insists, is
the exception. What makes Rather different? `Dan's a girl,' she
says. `Dan has the enthusiasm of a girl. There's a girl's soul
lurking in him.'"
- March 23 TV Guide story on women
covering the campaign.
CNN co-anchor Linden Soles:
"Well, everybody needs a hobby. I used to collect Barbies,
even made little clothes for them. Oops! I think that's your
line."
CNN co-anchor Kathleen Kennedy:
"I think he still collects them...."
Soles: "Now we want to
reiterate right here you were the one that used to play with the
little Barbies. I made the little clothes for them."
-
After story on Arkansas juror in a Star Trek uniform, March 13
World Today.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham;
Editors
- Geoffrey Dickens, Gene
Eliasen, James Forbes, Steve Kaminski, Clay Waters; Media
Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation
Manager; Jessica Anderson, Bruce Fraser, Interns